Dwight Howard vs David Robinson (athletic prime)

[TooNice00]

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But that doesn't work either. The percentage of black players in the NBA went over 70% by the mid-60s and hasn't varied much since. It's gone as high as 81%, but has been dropping in recent years due to what you mention--an influx European and other overseas players. But those players are not, on the whole, considered to be particularly athletic, so I don't see them as pushing up the overall level.

On top of that, there's the expansion question/issue. I, personally, think there are more good basketball players than there have ever been. A lot more. If you took the 10 players that were the 35-45th best players today, and had them play the 35th-45th best players from 1966, the modern players would kill them. But expansion has watered down that advantage. The league is over three times bigger. Players 35-45 in a league of 110 players are equal to players 140-150 in a league of 400 players. Things get balanced out. So the watering down of expansion affects the overall level of athleticism as well as talent.

yeah i dunno. something is different about athletic ability today. maybe the players just display it more.

[tranjSAIC]

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people have hardly evolved since they have been on the earth.

Are you F'ing kidding me? please don't tell me you think our human ancestors looked like us? Why don't you go back to school and learn about Early Human Phylogeny. I don't know if I agree with that 10 year mutation thing but to say we have hardly evolved since we been on the earth is moronic.

[tranjSAIC]

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Actually, it is pretty doubtful whether humans are still continuing to evolve. We've come to a point where we change the environment, instead of the other way around. So there's very little evolutionary pressure for humans.

But with the amount of change we are doing to our environment I bet we are evolving to deal with those changes we are making. I bet slowly our bodies are going to get used to all the smog and all that other BS we are putting out there.

[tranjSAIC]

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This coming from a guy who said, even after the draft, that David Harrison should be the #1 pick over Dwight Howard. DAVID HARRISON. You have zero basketball IQ. Don't care how old you are or what era you started watching. Don't even care if you were in James Naismiths gym class.

WOW, I always thought Writerman was an idiot based on his post but now I gotta say I KNOW he is one.

[TrueLAfan]

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yeah i dunno. something is different about athletic ability today. maybe the players just display it more.

Again a big part of this is the style of play. In the 1960s, playground play was kept to the playgrounds. The NBA was all business. Elgin Baylor had great hangtime; he virtually never dunked. A slam was considered to be an insulting, unnecessary play. Retribution was swift and extraordinarily brutal. The league was far more violent in the past than it is now. It was a lot more like hockey; fights were frequent occurrences. The game stopped, and the players just slugged it out. No suspensions, no refs involved--nothing. I caught the very tail end of it when I was a kid; I saw Al Attles mix it up with Stan Love (Kevin Love

[D.Brasco]

^^^

I remember reading Oscar robertson talking about why he didn't dunk much. He said it wasn't that he couldn't it actually had to with a traumatization he had on the playgrounds once. where he went up a for dunk and was slammed by another player into the pole.

[Blame Rasho]

Like I said, style of play is more important than anything

I want to address this.. you covered the basketball issue quite well but lets look into some other sports. I think the best sport to look into is boxing. It is one person vs another one. The most basic and primal of all sports. It is in my estimation closest uses all the physical qualities that you would need from a basketball player. You need to be strong,quick,endurance, skill to really excel in the sport. What are the differences today? Back then it wasn't too uncommon to see fighter fight more than 15 rounds. They would also fight more often up to 7 or 8 times a year if you were the champ. They had a much better work rate and were much more well conditioned. Basketball parallels this... back in the day players played at a faster pace and played more mins.

[KNICKS1970]

Like I said, style of play is more important than anything

I want to address this.. you covered the basketball issue quite well but lets look into some other sports. I think the best sport to look into is boxing. It is one person vs another one. The most basic and primal of all sports. It is in my estimation closest uses all the physical qualities that you would need from a basketball player. You need to be strong,quick,endurance, skill to really excel in the sport. What are the differences today? Back then it wasn't too uncommon to see fighter fight more than 15 rounds. They would also fight more often up to 7 or 8 times a year if you were the champ. They had a much better work rate and were much more well conditioned. Basketball parallels this... back in the day players played at a faster pace and played more mins.

Well, it's a lot more complex than that when it comes to boxing. 15 round fights were reduced to 12 rounders after the Ray Mancini-Duk Koo Kim fight forced the governing bodies to address medical care during and after fights. Fighters would fight often, but at great cost to their health (Ali's Parkinson's being the most famous example). Also, the best heavyweight fighters in today's game are playing other sports. Guys like Ron Artest or Brian Urlacher would've been awesome fighters.

[Blame Rasho]

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Well, it's a lot more complex than that when it comes to boxing. 15 round fights were reduced to 12 rounders after the Ray Mancini-Duk Koo Kim fight forced the governing bodies to address medical care during and after fights. Fighters would fight often, but at great cost to their health (Ali's Parkinson's being the most famous example). Also, the best heavyweight fighters in today's game are playing other sports. Guys like Ron Artest or Brian Urlacher would've been awesome fighters.

I know that... about Kim's death on national TV( and hence why we will prolly never see another fight on national TV) made all the sanctioning bodies reduce fights to 12 rounds for safety, but for the most part fighters had no problems going 15 rounds. You know when Jack Johnson fought fights, they went up to 45 rounds.

[TooNice00]

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Are you F'ing kidding me? please don't tell me you think our human ancestors looked like us? Why don't you go back to school and learn about Early Human Phylogeny. I don't know if I agree with that 10 year mutation thing but to say we have hardly evolved since we been on the earth is moronic.

ah that depends if you believe in evolution which is based on some facts but mostly speculation. but in the last 10,000 years nothing has really happened. Scientifically, 10,000 years is not much time for natural selection to act, and it certainly is not enough time to evolve. small characteristics like height and weight may change but that is due to medical care and proper nutrition.